On page 152 of MacLaurin’s Remarkable Cases, under date February 3, 1752, there is a short account of the pleadings at the trial. The following is a note of the matter contained there, with the exception of the finding of the jury, which has already been given:—
His Majesty’s Advocate against Helen Torrence and Jean Waldie.
“They were indicted for stealing and murdering John Dallas, a boy about eight or nine years of age, son of John Dallas, chairman, in Edinburgh, on the 3rd December, 1751.
“The counsel for the prisoners represented, that however the actual murder might be relevant to infer the pains of death, yet the stealing of the child could only infer an arbitrary punishment. And as to the selling of the dead body, it was no crime at all.
“Ans.—Though the stealing the child when alive, when disjoined from the selling of it when dead, might not go so far; yet, when taken together, they were undoubtedly relevant to infer a capital punishment.
“The court pronounced the usual interlocutor.”
AN INTERVIEW WITH BURKE IN PRISON.
The following appeared in the Caledonian Mercury early in the month of January, 1829:—
“The information from which the following article is drawn up we have received from a most respectable quarter, and its perfect correctness in all respects may be confidently relied on. In truth, it is as nearly as possible a strict report, rather than the substance, of what passed at an interview with Burke, in the course of which the unhappy man appears to have opened his mind without reserve, and to have given a distinct and explicit answer to every question which was put to him relative to his connection with the late murders.
“After some conversation of a religious nature, in the course of which Burke stated that, while in Ireland, his mind was under the influence of religious impressions, and that he was accustomed to read his Catechism and Prayer-book, and to attend to his duties. He was asked, ‘How comes it then that you, who, by your own account, were once under the influence of religious impressions, ever formed the idea of such dreadful atrocities, of such cold-blooded, systematic murders as you admit you have been engaged in—how came such a conception to enter your mind?’ To this Burke replied, ‘that he did not exactly know; but that becoming addicted to drink, living in open adultery, and associating continually with the most abandoned characters, he gradually became hardened and desperate; gave up attending chapel or any place of religious worship, shunned the face of the priest, and being constantly familiar with every species of wickedness, he at length grew indifferent as to what he did, and was ready to commit any crime.’